1. Field
Embodiments relate generally to the field of web browsers.
2. Background
The emergence and development of the Internet allows users to access a wide range of resources. For example, different web site publishers maintain web pages for particular subjects that are accessible over the Internet. Access to these resources presents opportunities for third-party content providers (e.g., advertisers) to offer third-party content (e.g., advertisements) to be provided along with the resources. A web page can, for example, include advertisement slots in which advertisements can be presented. These advertisement slots can be defined for presentation within a web page, for example, in an inline frame (or simply “an iframe”) or other content area within the web page. The advertisement slots can also be defined in the web page.
Web content delivery systems provide technology to web site publishers and third-party content providers to serve content on a particular publisher's web site. However, the delivery of the publisher's web site to the user via the user's web browser may be impacted by such a content delivery system. For example, an advertising exchange allows the purchase and sale of advertisement slots associated with web pages between different advertising networks. An advertising network that purchases an advertisement slot may place an advertisement of its own on the web page in question or alternatively, redirect to another advertising network, for example, by selling the advertisement slot. This kind of redirection may occur in a daisy-chain fashion and involve numerous advertising networks. In some cases, the daisy chain may redirect back to advertising networks that came earlier in the chain of redirects.
Such a chain of redirection can lead to increased latency and reduced performance while the browser tries to render the web page. In addition, when a publisher's web page redirects to a number of advertising networks in a daisy chain, each advertising network typically leaves a cookie in the user's browser, which may pose privacy concerns for the user. Further, such long redirect chains have been generally observed to increase the risk of receiving spam advertisements.
It is possible for web site publishers and web content (e.g., advertising) delivery systems to form agreements that establish limits to the number of redirects a third-party content provider or third-party content provider network (e.g., an advertising network) is allowed to perform. However, conventional solutions do not provide an effective way of actually enforcing such limits.